An Engagement Of Convenience

‘Who should know better than you, child?’ For a moment Vittoria Fortinari looked every moment of her age, and more, then she straightened and summoned a smile. ‘Now tell me, Rosa, have you brought a beautiful dress to wear tomorrow night?’

Harriet confessed to bringing more than one. Rosa had provided her with two stunning creations with mouth-watering labels, each of them worn only once.

After bringing the signora up to date on Rosa Mostyn’s current life and job, taking care to omit any reference to Pascal Tavernier in the process, Harriet reported on the precarious health of Allegra Mostyn.

‘Tony is driving everyone mad, Allegra included, because he’s in such a state,’ said Harriet.

‘It is a fortunate that men are not obliged to give birth,’ said Vittoria dryly. ‘Otherwise the human race would have died out long ago.’

Harriet’s appreciative chuckle turned into a yawn, and the other woman patted her hand affectionately.

‘Silvia has taken up your luggage. Go up to your room and have a bath and a rest before dinner, my child. You look tired. I shall visit the kitchen, and interfere with all the preparations for tomorrow. Because of them dinner tonight will be just a simple cold meal.’

‘I’ll enjoy that,’ Harriet assured her, and accompanied the signora across the square hall. The shallow, worn stone stairs led up to a gallery which ran round three sides of the renaissance-style colonnade of arches in the hall below.

‘You are in your old room, cara,’ said Vittoria, and kissed Harriet’s cheek. ‘Sleep, if you can. We shall eat at eight.’

Very much aware that the signora was watching with a fond smile, Harriet went upstairs slowly, praying she could find the right room. Following the diagram etched in her brain Harriet turned left at the head of the stairs, counted three doors along on the right, and sure enough, an open door revealed Rosa’s luggage standing at the foot of a carved wood bed in a room where everything, down to the last ornament, was just as Rosa had described it. Harriet closed the door behind her and leaned against it, letting out a sigh of heartfelt relief. So far so good. Two hurdles cleared. Only Dante and Mirella left. But Rosa had been certain there would be no trouble with Leo’s younger brother and sister. The most dangerous fly in the ointment, she’d warned, was Leo himself. Harriet cursed herself for failing to hide her dismay when his grandmother commanded him to dine with them. Leo had been amused by it, damn the man. Now that Signora Fortinari had accepted her without hesitation it was obvious that Rosa was right. Leo was the main danger.

Rosa had strongly advised against being friendly with Leo Fortinari. Harriet was to be as cool and distant as she liked, because that was how Rosa would have behaved if she’d come herself. If only she had! thought Harriet wearily, and blessed the industrious Silvia when she found her clohes unpacked and put away. Feeling more criminal than ever she shut herself into the bathroom and used Rosa’s cellphone to call her mother, and after a swift report on initial success, promised to ring next day and asked Claire to pass on the news.

Later, after a bath and a rest among the cool linen sheets of the bed, Harriet felt a lot better. Wrapped in a dressing gown she stood at the window for a while, able to enjoy the view to the full now there was no hostile male presence to spoil it for her. She had spent time in Siena during her language course, and had fallen in love with Italy the moment she arrived. The view from the Villa Castiglione rekindled the passion as she gazed at violet-shadowed hills rolling away into the fading light. The village in the foreground was far enough below to be a mere jumble of umber walls and cinnamon roofs clustering round a church and a slender tower where a bell began to peal as she watched. Harriet listened with delight, and relaxed at last as she breathed in the remembered scent of Tuscany.

When starlit darkness eventually hid the view Harriet turned back into the room and switched on lamps, then threw open the doors of the carved armoire and eyed the selection of clothes Rosa had provided. The borrowed jeans she’d worn with a lightweight jacket for travelling were the kind of thing she wore herself, though with less famous labels. But for more formal wear Rosa had a liking for clothes totally foreign to anything Harriet owned. Once her hair was dry she smoothed on a dress knitted from cobwebfine topaz wool, with a long skirt which curved over the hips and clung at the knees in a way which suggested a mermaid’s tail. Thankful for an inch less than Rosa above and below the waist Harriet added the matching jacket to mitigate the second-skin effect a little, then made up her face with Rosa’s cosmetics, emphasizing her eyes as patiently instructed. She slid her feet into bronze pumps with tall, slender heels, then gave her reflection a mocking salute with a hand embellished with Rosa’s heavy, pearl-studded gold ring.

When Harriet went downstairs she took a peep into a dining room laid ready for dinner, then crossed the hall to find Rosa’s grandmother enthroned on the ruby velvet sofa, with a tray of drinks beside her.

‘Rosa, how elegant!’ she exclaimed.

Harriet bent to kiss the cheek held up for the caress. ‘So are you, Nonna.’

‘Come, pour yourself a glass of wine, and sit beside me while we wait. Tell me about Tony and his new wife. Do you like her?’

Harriet told everything she’d learned about the unknown Tony and Allegra, and their excitement over their first baby, then broke off to nibble hungrily on a bread stick wound with prosciutto. But she chose sparkling water to drink. Having come this far without mishap it seemed best to avoid the tongue-loosening properties of Fortinari wine.

‘You are hungry, child. You should have asked Silvia for something to eat,’ scolded Vittoria.

‘I just wanted coffee when I arrived,’ said Harriet, taking another bread stick. ‘And I can never eat on the plane. I hate flying.’

‘Do you, dearest?’ Vittoria Fortinari looked surprised. ‘You used to love it when you were a child.’

Oops, thought Harriet. Careful. ‘I’m not so keen these days—’ she halted abruptly as the other woman’s eyes filled with sudden tears.

‘Of course you are not, Rosa,’ said Vittoria huskily, and dabbed a handkerchief to her eyes. ‘Forgive me.’

Harriet’s arms went out involuntarily, and Vittoria clasped her close. They stayed immobile for several seconds, both of them deeply contrite, for different reasons, for bringing up the subject of flying.

‘Good evening.’

Harriet drew away swiftly from the scented, comforting embrace of Rosa’s grandmother to see Leonardo Fortinari approaching across the faded, beautiful carpet. Less formal, but equally impressive in an open-necked shirt under a linen jacket a shade or two paler than his perfectly cut fawn trousers, he gave Harriet a slow, all-encompassing look which travelled up to her eyes at last and stayed there.

‘I agree that Rosa looks beautiful this evening, but stop staring at her,’ said his grandmother severely. ‘You are late—and where is Dante?’

Leo removed his gaze with visible effort, and turned to his grandmother. ‘Forgive me, Nonna. Dante makes his apologies,’ he said, stooping to kiss her. ‘He is detained in Arezzo, and will not be home until late. But he promised to be first here tomorrow night.’ He turned to Harriet. ‘Your rest has transformed you, Rosa.’

‘Thank you,’ she returned with composure.

‘But she is hungry,’ said Vittoria, and rang a small silver bell. ‘Let us go straight to the table.’

Harriet made appreciative murmurs as she was served with pasta in savoury meat sauce for the first course of the meal Vittoria Fortinari had warned would be simple, due to the industry still raging in the kitchen as they dined.

‘It was always your favourite,’ she said affectionately, as Harriet made short work of her pasta.

‘With such appetite it is a wonder you stay so slender,’ observed Leo, watching her. ‘You were much rounder once.’

‘I work hard,’ said Harriet. So did Rosa, despite her money.

‘Is Tony so relentless in keeping you tied to the Hermitage?’ queried Leo, leaning nearer to fill her water glass.

Aware that Vittoria Fortinari was awaiting her answer with deep interest Harriet met his black-lashed eyes serenely. ‘Not at all. I answer to no one but myself. Now. When my parents died I inherited a substantial sum of money, as I’m sure you know. I work in the family business because I want to, not because I’m forced to. And at the moment, while Tony is so anxious about Allegra, I divide myself between the Hermitage out in the country, and the Chesterton in Pennington, to give him more time with her.’

Signora Fortinari nodded approvingly. ‘In his letter Tony told me he is very grateful for this.’

Leo Fortinari shook his head in mocking admiration. ‘It is hard to believe that reckless little Rosa has changed into such a responsible adult.’

His grandmother eyed him coldly. ‘It is time, Leonardo, that we put the past behind us, and enjoy the present What little I have left of it,’ she added, laying a dramatic hand on her heart.

‘Nonna, you will live to be a hundred,’ he assured her, but from then on his manner became noticeably less hostile to the prodigal granddaughter.

Rosa’s teenage episode obviously rankles with him even now, thought Harriet, as the plates were removed. Leo, apparently taking his grandmother’s words to heart, helped both women to thin slices of spiced ham, and to the accompanying salad of cheese and ripe red tomato slices dressed with olive oil and basil. Harriet accepted his attentions politely, but listened with genuine interest as he talked of the latest Fortinari Chianti Classico.

‘Is that what we’re drinking?’ asked Harriet.

Leo raised his eyebrows. ‘No, little savage. This is from the 1997 vintage—the best for fifty years. Nonna has opened it in honour of your return.’

‘Instead of the fatted calf?’ said Harriet, smiling, and willed Leo to change the subject. One of the many differences between herself and Rosa Mostyn, was her very un-Italian ignorance of wine.

‘A fondness for wine was never one of your failings, darling,’ said Vittoria, startling Harriet by her insight. ‘At least,’ she added, eyes twinkling, ‘not when you were seventeen.’

Nor was it for Harriet now she was nine years older than that. Wine was an unaffordable luxury in the Foster household.

‘So, Rosa,’ said Leo, leaning back in his chair, ‘you are an important aid to the running of the Mostyn empire.’

Harriet was getting tired, and finding it hard to concentrate. She spoke Italian fluently enough, but an entire evening of conversation in a foreign tongue, while simultaneously trying to maintain a faultless impersonation of Rosa, was beginning to tell. ‘Two hotels can hardly be called an empire,’ she pointed out.

‘True,’ he allowed. ‘But they are successful, and well known to foreign visitors for their luxury and comfort. Perhaps I shall come and stay at your Hermitage, and sample the Mostyn hospitality myself one day.’

‘By all means,’ said Harriet, secure in the knowledge that if he did the real Rosa Mostyn would have the pleasure of entertaining him. A thought which gave her a sudden, unaccountable pang she put down to indigestion.